


some things you'll do for money (and some you'll do for love)

by scorpiod



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Established Relationship, Heist, M/M, Pre-Canon, Sibling Incest, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:35:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26291992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/pseuds/scorpiod
Summary: Seth gets restless so easily.OR day in the life of a job.
Relationships: Richard Gecko/Seth Gecko
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21
Collections: RelationShipping 2020





	some things you'll do for money (and some you'll do for love)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



Seth wakes up right about the time they hit Albuquerque. He expects hot scorching desert heat, to feel sweat down his back, but it's a foggy morning instead, the city covered in grey chill. Too early for sun, the car radio blinking out 5:52 AM, but the heat will hit later, Seth knows. 

“Where are we?” Seth groggily asks; his body is tightly knotted and cramped up, the way it gets when he falls asleep on long drives. Usually, he does the driving, and Richie somehow manages to snooze, his giant body ridiculous in the passenger seat. But even Seth needs to rest sometimes, and they don’t have the money for hotels all the time, driving on through the night.

“ABQ,” Richie says, stepping out of the car. The gas meter is getting low. Seth rolls his eyes and follows suit; they'd have to trade seats after this anyway. 

“But  _ where _ ?”

“Not the job,” Richie confirms. He hands Seth a twenty. “Get us some gas, will ya?” 

Seth narrows his eyes at the small bill. “A twenty isn't gonna fill the tank bro,” he says. 

“We just need a few more miles,” Richie says. “Maybe get some coffee while inside? You know what I like.” His eyes are soft but warm, and Seth feels a bit like a piece of shit for the words he can't stop fumbling out of his mouth. 

“We got coffee money?” Seth complains, voice rough, glancing at the gas station. 

At a certain point, when funds run low, Seth starts eyeing every person and place with a sort of assessing desire—every car on a parking lot, every potential deserted alleyway or lonely place, every strangler to break from a crowd. His good will runs out and everyone becomes a target.

It’s not personal; he can’t help it. He has a thief’s mind and it never stops working. Richie is always there with the plans but Seth is always looking for the right direction to point him in. 

“We’re not robbing the Valero,” Richie says. Because the fucker reads minds, apparently. 

“We need money,” Seth says, patting his side arm. 

“We have a job in 12 hours,” Richie says, glaring down on him. They've had this conversation before.  _ It's not part of the plan _ . Already, Seth can tell Richie’s affection has turned sour. “Just pay for the fucking gas, will you?”

With a sigh, Seth does as he’s told. 

Still, Seth shoplifts a candy bar. It makes him feel all of twelve instead of twenty two, and not terribly accomplished, but it’s old school. He used to steal muffins and candy bars and whatever his little pockets could fill to keep them fed. When they got older, he and Richie cleared out 7-11s and Kwik Trips in amateur ski masks. Now it’s bank chains and the safes of rich assholes in a suit and tie. 

In the passenger seat, Richie glares at him and makes a scolding motion as Seth slips in the driver's seat. He tosses the candy bar at Richie’s lap, like a tribute, knowing full well his brother is just going to be cranky for the next several miles. 

“Hope you enjoyed your cheap thrills,” he snarls out, taking his coffee from Seth’s hands. 

“You know I didn't,” Seth mutters under his breath. He doesn't even like Mars Bars. 

He had to do something though. Last stop for a while and Seth gets restless so easy. 

***

New Mexico is miserable, as far as Seth is concerned. He doesn’t like desert, he doesn’t like desert heat. He doesn’t like hot arid suffocating air or sticky heat. He doesn’t like long stretches of road that lead nowhere. He doesn’t like fucking cacti. He especially doesn’t like the middle of nowhere _._ He’s a Midwest boy but he’s a Kansas City boy first and foremost. Seth likes big cities. He likes to feel grounded in them, disappear in the ground, become just another face in the crowd. Slip in and out. 

“You hate every fucking place we go,” Richie sighs, interrupting his ramble, voice thick with sleep, the way it gets on long drives. “I swear, you’ll never be happy.”

“I don’t, that’s not true,” Seth says, and immediately starts rattling off cities he likes.  _ Maimi. St. Louis. Durango.  _ Not New York, or Boston, or really any New England town. Rude motherfuckers. 

“I thought you wanted to go to Mexico,” Richie asks, not even looking at him, face staring at the scenery outside. Richie, all long limbs, propping up his legs against the dash like a heathen. It’s easy to mistreat a car that isn’t yours. Seth feels a complaint in his throat but he keeps it there. 

“I want to go to a Mexican  _ beach,  _ buddy, not the desert parts of it. Cancún, not Toledo. Retirement with all the American expats.” He glances around at the red desert and rock and road around him. Seth wants the water licking at his feet, to lay back under the sunshine and drink all the  _ tequila blanco _ he wants. “This state don’t count.”

_ Guys like them don’t retire _ , whispers the back of his mind, but that’s not something he wants to bring up right now, not something he wants to think about. 

Richie rolls his eyes; Seth doesn’t have to be looking at him to know. He can  _ feel  _ it, pressing down on him, the irritation wafting off him. Richie’s eyes have always dug holes into him. 

But he doesn’t say anything. Richie shifts again in his seat, and tilts the seat back. Asleep, or trying to. 

It’s a long drive. Seth wants to pull over and walk for a bit, stretch out his limbs.

Seth looks at Richie’s legs—long fucking legs, his brother is built like a tree—and imagines them spread around him, over the car. Imagines them wrapped around his waist as he fucks him in the back seat.

“Do you wanna...?” Seth starts. 

“No,” Richie cuts him off. Neither of them need to say more. “We’re in a time crunch. Eyes on the prize.”

***

Today, they are robbing an asshole in Rancho Cielo, on the outskirts of ABQ, up in the hills. A nice house, with columns and old school ranch style architecture, long sprawling villa that was one story but fancy, nonetheless. It had a safe full of jewels and precious stones, an owner on vacation, and a surprisingly shoddy security gate system that Richie cracks in no time. Seth wants to do this in a suit or tie but they’re dressed like cable company lumps, coming to do repairs. Richie’s idea, Richie’s the planner. They brought a van and everything, all legit. 

It goes off without a hitch; Seth takes out the cameras and destroys the security system while Richie cracks the safe, pulling out several glittering jewels, rubies and emeralds and one shiny hard diamond. 

They’re gonna have to hock them, get a guy to fence them for them and—the worst part, split at least some of the money with him as payment. Seth wants to keep them but there’s no point in a payday of jewels if you’re not getting money for them. He just hates working with a middle man. 

They’re getting ready to go, Richie handing Seth the bag of jewels and gathering his tools when—

Someone cocks a shotgun and it’s not either one of them; they didn’t bring shotguns to this job. They probably should have.

Seth turns around. Behind him is the goddamn owner of the place; a crotchety old man, grey hair closely cropped, military style, liver spots, but with fierce, dark eyes, blazing with anger. He’s pointing a shotgun at Seth. 

“What the fuck?” 

“Drop it,” he growls out. He sounds like he’s seen one too many movies but Seth drops the bags anyway, not liking the gun aimed at his chest. 

(maybe he reminds Seth of his old own old man; so what if he did?)

“Richie, is this the asshole?” He asks. 

“Yes,” Richie says, frozen beside him, face a mask of indifference as the wheels in his brain turn. “That’s the owner.” 

“ _ Asshole _ ? Oh, you are really pushing it boy,” the asshole says, stepping closer, gun getting closer with him.  _ Boy  _ makes Seth flinch. He swallows, hard, his heart racing. He is hyper aware of the hair all standing up in the back of his neck, of the sweat rolling down his brow, in a way he wasn’t earlier with the heat. It’s hard to maintain composure. Richie makes it look so easy. 

“I thought he was on vacation,”’Seth says to his brother. 

“He was,” Richie says evenly, assessing their mark. “He’s supposed to be.”

“I came back early,” the mark says. 

“What the fuck?”

“Who tipped you off?” Richie asks. “Copper? Winston?” Richie lists off names of contacts, people they brushed up against for this job. Seth was going to kill someone for this. This is why he hates working with anyone else. He can’t trust anyone but his brother. 

“Like I’m telling you,” he snarls. He steps just close to push the tip of the barrel against Seth’s chest, entirely too close for comfort. Seth tries not to think about that, tries not to look down at his impending death. It’s not the first time he’s stared down a barrel of a gun and it won’t be the last. In the corner of his eye, Seth can see the vein in Richie’s head throb, color rising to his cheeks. “Now, nice and quiet-like, you’re going to use that fancy cell phone of yours, and call the police. There you go, nice and easy.” 

Seth can’t help himself. He never can. He scoffs, rolling his eyes. “If you think I’m calling the cops on me and my brother, old man, you got another think coming.” 

The old man shoves his shotgun straight into his chest, hard enough to wind him, making Seth gasp and double over. Richie’s eyebrows knit in concern. 

Seth’s father always said he had a mouth on him, and he always liked to hurt him for that too.

“Fuck you,” Seth hisses between his teeth. He stares straight down at the barrel, at the man’s finger on the trigger, waiting. 

“You’re a real baby face asshole, you know? What are you twelve? You really should—” 

Richie moves faster than Seth can see, shoving the barrel to the side so the shotgun is aimed at the fancy walls and glass windows behind him, and not Seth. The gun goes off, the blast loud in his ears, something shattering behind them. The sound of it startles Richie enough that he clamps his hands around his head but Seth doesn’t waste the opening. He reaches in his pocket, not for a fancy cell phone but for his trusty 9mm pistol and shoots. 

He gets the guy in the head, dead-on, and he crumples to the ground, dead weight, shotgun clattering. Seth feels the warmth of blood splatter across his face, and the hot acrid smell of fresh gunpowder fills the air. 

For a while, they just stand there, breathing hard, trying to get their bearings. Richie stares at the body, watching the blood flow from his head. The front of his forehead is a neat little hole. The back of his head is an explosion of gore. The shot is still echoing in the house, and probably all throughout the neighborhood. Seth knows that’s what Richie is thinking. Of the mess, of the attention they’re about to draw in. 

“Guess he should have just stayed away,” Seth says, chuckling to himself. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Seth,” Richie says, letting out a sigh of frustration, rubbing his hands on his knees. “You just had to piss him off? This was supposed to be a simple job, now we’re gonna have a murder investigation, people looking into this shit—-”

“What the fuck? Did you miss the part where he was trying to kill me?” Seth narrows his eyes, glaring. “It wasn’t  _ my  _ contacts that betrayed us.”

“Fuck you,” Richie snarls, with genuine heat in his voice, so much that Seth almost apologizes right then and there.  _ I didn’t mean to say you’re bad at this  _ is at the tip of his tongue but he can’t quite make himself say it. He just doesn’t want Richie angry at him. 

“Let’s just get the fuck out of here,” Richie says, in a tired voice. “Get the jewels.” 

They ditch the car and change their clothes, grabbing an extra pair of civvies from the van before dumping it. 

Seth wants to steal something nice and classic but Richie glares at him. “We don’t have time to be picky, asshole,” he says. Richie is always function over form. 

They steal a goddamn Honda Acura. A fucking 1999 one. It’s fucking disgraceful. 

  
  


***

They go to a diner. Stealing shit can work up an appetite. So does murder. 

“You should go wash up,” Richie tells him as he slides into the booth. His voice is low, meant for him, but also scolding, and it sets Seth’s teeth on edge. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Seth dismisses him, hushing him as the waitress comes over and hands them menus. 

Seth asks for coffee. “Black. Load it up, keep it coming.” What he really wants is alcohol, but this place doesn’t even have shitty beer. 

“Coke, please,” Richie asks, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t make eye contact with the waitress. 

They’re out of coke but they offer Richie Pepsi, who agrees to it but not before visibly frowning, disappointed. 

When the waitress leaves, Richie kicks him under the table in the shin. It’s a surprisingly hard kick. Seth bites down on a cry. “What the fuck?” He asks. 

“Wash. Up,” he insists, glaring at him. Then lower, in an angry hiss, “you have blood in your hair.”

Sure enough, Seth reaches up and feels a few strands of his dark hair, clumped together, matted with blood. 

He exhales, a bit too loudly, and decides  _ fuck it.  _ “When we get a hotel,” he says. 

“Seth,  _ now _ ,” Richie says, anxiety radiating off him in waves, as if they’d be caught because of some hard-to-see blood. 

Seth ignores him and is spared by the waitress coming back with their drinks and taking the rest of their orders. Seth is starving. He orders for Richie, knows his order like the back of his hand—teriyaki burger, no pickles, extra hot sauce, sweet potatoes fries—but instead of being pleased with him, Richie slumps into his seat, shrinking his shoulders and says not a word, eyes going distant and unfocused. 

“Cheer up, will you?” Seth tells him. “We won. We got what we were after. That’s all that matters.”

Richie gives him the silent treatment, all throughout the diner. 

***

Seth drives them away. Richie stares out the window, a heavy forlorn silence wrapped around them both. It makes Seth all twitchy, and it makes him more restless than usual, tapping his fingers along the steering wheel while Steely Dan sings on the radio.

They stop at a gas station, near a little unincorporated part of the state, a lone building on a road in the darkness. Richie picks up his sour worms and Jolt cola. Seth grabs a Steel Reserve. They have the jewels and Seth wants to spring for a night at the strip club but they’re getting further and further from civilization, going to have to lie low for a while. 

Before they find a motel, Seth pulls over. The sky is glittering dark above them. The red desert around him looks midnight blue now, hidden in the pitch black. Seth pulls off on the side, his car wheels hitting the dirt before he shuts off the engine, turns off the headlights, leaving them both in the darkness. 

“Seth—” Richie starts to say.

Seth ignores him and cups his face, bringing him in for a kiss. 

Richie makes a noise in his mouth, a soft  _ oomph,  _ and Seth can’t tell if it’s a noise of protest or or desire. But he doesn’t push him away. Richie’s mouth opens up for him, a little bit of a burn as they kiss, tongue licking in. He lets Richie’s body tell him what he wants, lets the tension in Richie’s arms and shoulders release and melt away as they kiss. It’s always like muscle memory for them.

“Don’t be mad at me,” Seth says when he pulls away. He leans his forehead against Richie’s, sharing breath, both of them panting into each other’s mouths. Richie’s glasses are askew and Seth plucks them off his face, setting them on the dash. Even in the darkness, Richie’s eyes are very blue, burning bright as he nods. 

Seth grins at him and leans down for another kiss, then another, until he finds himself climbing awkwardly over the console and setting himself in Richie’s lap. Richie’s hard already, always so fucking easy for him. 

“Fuck,” Richie hisses, adjusting the seat, pulling it back and laying it down for them. Silent treatment over. “Gimme some warning, huh?” 

The Honda Acura isn’t very sexy. It’s not a car Seth wants to fuck in. Seth wants Richie stretched out on a cherry red convertible, pale skin against the bright paint. He has all these fantasies about fucking Richie in a Cadillac, a Camaro, a Dodge Charger, blowing him and making him come in some rich guy’s fancy white Mustang, always a stolen car in his head, always something he wants to  _ ruin  _ with their fingerprints. 

But it’s never been about the car and it’s never really been about the money. It’s just about having Richie at his side. 

The cars whiz by them on the highway but none of them matter. The desert stretches out long and wide around them both, a dark road under a dark sky full of stars, ready to swallow them whole. On the outskirts of anything civilized, Seth kisses his brother until they both grind their cocks against each other to a messy, needy climax. 


End file.
